Innovation Diplomacy: a New Concept for Ancient Practices?

The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 15 (2020) 383-397 brill.com/hjd Innovation Diplomacy: A New Concept for Ancient Practices? Pascal Griset Sirice/CRHI, Project InsSciDE, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France [email protected] Received: 11 June 2020; revised: 4 July 2020; accepted: 5 August 2020 Summary This essay questions the concept of innovation diplomacy to determine its true perim- eter and its different dimensions. To this end, it quickly addresses the strong points of an argument that appeared in the second half of the 2000s and which establishes in a very general way a filiation, or even a succession, between science diplomacy and innovation diplomacy. A historical approach shows that what is called innovation diplomacy encompasses ancient practices at the crossroads of science, technology, economy and culture. It finds that innovation diplomacy can be understood only as a hybrid concept reflecting organisations and strategies rooted in older practices articu- lated to the challenges of the present time. Keywords innovation – diplomacy – science – economics – technology – communication – history 1 Introduction1 After economic diplomacy, the concept of science diplomacy has emerged as one of the major axes of reflection on new diplomatic practices over the past 1 Acknowledgements — This publication has received financial support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research program InsSciDE (Inventing a Shared Science Diplomacy for Europe) under grant agreement No. 770523. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/1871191X-bja10036Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 07:46:13AM via free access 384 Griset twenty years.2 This new occupation of the conceptual and semantic field gen- erated fruitful conceptual initiatives. It also gave birth to confrontations that frequently combine epistemological questioning and institutional position- ing that favour overly one-sided visions of what science and economics are all about. Science diplomacy is therefore often seen as a diplomatic channel for maintaining relations in times of tension. It can also be seen as a factor of peace that promotes bringing peoples closer together. This vision is connected to the ideal of ‘pure’ science elevated above the contingencies of the world. It has long since been deconstructed to implement a more realistic vision of what science and scientists are at the helm of society. This becomes quite clear when fields such as technology or economics intersect with those of science. The concept of ‘techno-sciences’ thus highlights the fact that whole areas of scientific activity are connected to technology. Technology is not a separate ‘application’ of science.3 In a similar way, science and economics can hardly be separated. Science generates economic activity just as it depends on economic activity to provide the means and, to a certain extent, which is debated, to bring to light the problems that will enable it to answer the right questions. Interactions between science, technology and economy constitute highly com- plex elements when analysing our societies or international affairs.4 The concept of innovation can be one of the keys to dynamically take these entangled links into account. As a category of action, innovation can be doubly connected to the world of knowledge and ideas, on the one hand, and to what Fernand Braudel named ‘Civilisation Matérielle’, on the other.5 It is therefore not surprising that, after economics and science, innovation appears as an element which can help to better define, or even characterise, specific diplomatic practices. Innovation concerns broad fields and can in many respects, includ- ing in the Schumpeterian view, be associated with many forms of creativity (organisational, commercial, political, cultural or even social).6 Nevertheless, the term innovation refers frequently, in current social debates, to technology. Noting that the term innovation diplomacy has recently entered the discourse of diplomats and academics,7 this short essay mainly intends to con- tribute to the reflection on the notion of innovation diplomacy by being more attentive to the construction over time of the practices that have been grouped under this term for the past few years. This approach, however, is based on 2 Royal Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science 2010; Ruffini 2015. 3 Pestre 1998. 4 Skolnikoff 1993; Weiss 2005, 2015; Carayannis and Campbell 2012. 5 Braudel 1979. 6 Caron 2010. 7 Rüffin 2018. The Hague Journal of DiplomacyDownloaded 15from (2020) Brill.com10/01/2021 383-397 07:46:13AM via free access Innovation Diplomacy: A New Concept for Ancient Practices? 385 an initial characterisation of innovation diplomacy based on the most recent publications. A historicisation of innovation diplomacy then enables us to highlight deep, ancient and often neglected ties, with economic and technical diplomacy. Finally, the same approach allows us to insert innovation diplomacy into a broader grid to consider it as a very plastic category characterised by a hybridity resulting from the convergence of practices that initially belonged to diverse fields of diplomacy. 2 The Growing Importance of the Idea of Innovation during the 20th Century Today, our societies’ relationship to innovation appears to be obvious. Through the figures of the ‘New Economy’ such as Steve Jobs, innovation has become a cardinal value within companies and, more generally, within many institutions. ‘Innovate or perish’8 has become the absolute rule in the business world. This injunction, which is stimulating but also questionable in many respects, is being applied more extensively to institutions in a much broader way. Change and modernity are thus major terms in political argumentation and have become ‘baselines’ for the arguments deployed by states or cities when it comes to promoting their action or enhancing their attractiveness. This seductive power of innovation is, however, a recent phenomenon in history.9 Innovation and technical excellence, totally tied in our systems of representation, were not connected until a relatively recent past. Economists have, therefore, only slow- ly or even reluctantly integrated the technological facts into their frameworks. Nikolaï Kondratiev10 drew attention to the key role of technology in economics without, however, making a deep and global impact on theory. It was the ‘seizures’ of the capitalist system that prompted the theorists to take into account what can, in a desperate situation, revive the machine. The Depression of the 1930s consequently allowed Joseph Schumpeter to put forward his analyses and placed innovation at the heart of the economy, presenting it as the driv- ing force of growth. His Theory of Economic Development, although published in German in 1912, was not translated into English until 1934 and into French the following year.11 As the economic crisis of 1929 favoured the dissemination of Schumpeter’s work, that of 1974 revived research on the role of technical 8 Kahn 2007. 9 Griset and Bouvier 2012. 10 Kondratiev [1935] 2014. 11 Schumpeter 1934, 1939. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 15 (2020) 383-397Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 07:46:13AM via free access 386 Griset innovation in economic activity. Gerhard Mensh, in 1979, analysed innovation as the key factor in overcoming depressions.12 The turnaround of the 1990s and the advent of the so-called New Economy gave greater credibility to this thesis of a technical origin of the major economic cycles. The concrete emergence of an innovation diplomacy thus predates the 1950s, which seems to be an im- passable horizon for many current analyses wishing to take a historical ‘step back’ in their argumentation. 3 Innovation and Diplomacy: An Explicit Convergence at the Turn of the Century It was only at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries that the term innovation diplomacy emerged. With the idea of innovation having become com- monplace in public debate and asserting itself as a cardinal value of modern society, it could not but be claimed by nations as a crucial element of their pol- icies. Diplomacy is therefore quite logically grasping this marker of the modern state. Like many other subcategories of diplomacy, innovation diplomacy has recently emerged as a concept based on an observation of practices. It is also a discourse on these practices and a way of valuing what is considered as an adaptation of diplomacy to the challenges of the present time. The literature and also the claims of diplomats themselves make it possible to identify a few strong lines of action directly related to it. First of all, it is an element of communication allowing a state, a region or even a city to assert itself on the international scene in front of its rivals and alongside its partners. It can therefore be linked to a form of soft power which relies on the positive public image car- ried by the word ‘innovation’. It is indeed easily associated with words that gen- erate sympathy. To innovate is to be young, reactive, modern; it is the assertion of an imaginative ability to adapt to future challenges. Innovation diplomacy is also identified as a tool for promoting trade. It enables partnerships to be set up and bridges to be built between research and business, thereby supporting the dynamism of the economy internationally. It reinforces the appeal of a space to attract investment and talent. In the context of ‘major challenges’, it can make it possible to build the alliances necessary to transcend antagonisms or cultural differences to deal globally with issues such as the environment, health or migration. 12 Mensh 1979. The Hague Journal of DiplomacyDownloaded 15from (2020) Brill.com10/01/2021 383-397 07:46:13AM via free access Innovation Diplomacy: A New Concept for Ancient Practices? 387 4 A New Wording More than a Theory The ‘concept’ of innovation diplomacy seems to be mainly the result of em- pirical approaches rather than the product of theoretical reflection.

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